Syrian troops are deployed in a Damascus suburb as tension mounts.

Nigel Fisher, Deputy Special Representative for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, describes the ongoing reconstruction effort in quake-ravaged Haiti.

(photo: Tim McLaughlin)

• The New Yorker: The toppling

From the archives: In September 2007 Lisa Mullins talked with former Marine Tim McLaughlin whose American flag was draped over Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad the day the Iraqi capital fell to American troops.

• KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY of DPRK
• BBC country profile

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MARCO WERMAN: Veteran US diplomat Stephen Bosworth began a rare trip to North Korea today.  He’s engaging in the highest-level talks with the communist country in more than a year.  Neither side has said which North Korean officials Bosworth will talk with.  He’s not expected to meet with North Korea’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong Il.  But, in the unlikely event that he does, it will surely be covered in the official North Korean media.  Jason Strother, in Seoul, South Korea, tells us about the North Korean anchorwoman who would report the story.

JASON STROTHER: There’s a familiar face that greets North Koreans when they tune in to watch the news.   An older woman, dressed in a traditional pink gown, bows to the camera before speaking.

RI CHUN HEE:  [speaking Korean]

STROTHER: That’s Ri Chun Hee.  She appears at the top of every newscast.  Her beat is the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. She reports every public appearance Kim makes, and recites the praises he’s said to receive from abroad.   According to a profile in a North Korean magazine, Ri was born in 1943.  She’s worked as a reporter for nearly 40 years.  Analysts say landing a news anchor job in North Korea isn’t easy.   You have to demonstrate ideological credentials and come from a trustworthy family just to get into journalism school.

BRIAN MYERS:  Ri Chun Hee is an exception, in that she didn’t go through the usual journalistic background, but instead, she kind of majored in drama.

STROTHER: Brian Myers analyzes North Korean propaganda at Dongseo University in Busan.

MYERS: That kind of background has stood her in good stead, I suppose because she has a very dramatic style of delivery.

STROTHER: Myers says there’s a lot of showmanship that goes into North Korean broadcasting.   He says news anchors use four distinct tones depending on what they’re talking about.  For instance, there’s the lofty, wavering voice, used when praising the nation’s leadership.  That’s Ri Chun Hee’s forte.

RI CHUN HEE:  [speaking Korean]

STROTHER:  There’s a staccato explanatory tone used for the weather. And then a more natural voice for uncontroversial news stories.  But the one that’s perhaps best known outside of North Korea is what Myers calls the invective tone.

MYERS: It’s a hate filled voice.  It kind of reminds me of what George Orwell was talking about in “1984,” when he talked about the two-minute hate.  It’s a voice just laden with scorn and hatred; I’m not going to try to imitate it.”

MYERS:  No problem, here’s a sample.

MAN:  [speaking Korean]

STROTHER: Voices like that are deeply familiar to North Koreans living in the south.  Jin Seong Rak defected in 2008.  He says he finds South Korean broadcast voices a little bland.

JIN SEONG RAK:  [speaking Korean]

STROTHER: They just don’t wake me up, Jin says. The North Korean style is a lot stronger and has more highs and lows.  Jin is now a journalist himself at a Seoul radio station, staffed mostly by North Koreans.  He and his colleagues are actually starting to pick up the more conversational South Korean broadcast voice, even though they transmit their program to North Korea.   Most North Koreans have no access to foreign media, so there’s no way for Jin to know how many listeners, if any, he’s stealing away from Ri Chun Hee, North Korea’s anchorwoman

RI CHUN HEE:  [speaking Korean]

STROTHER: What’s more certain is that as long as Kim Jong Il is around, you can probably count on Ri Chun Hee to give the latest.  For the World, I’m Jason Strother in Seoul, South Korea.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

The Israeli army disputes these figures, saying the vast majority of Palestinians killed were involved in the fighting.

Since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in June 2007, Israel has severely limited the entry of goods into Gaza. As the blockade of Gaza continues, Palestinians in Gaza are deepening their religious identity. Some female students have been told to change their dress, although Hamas officials say the orders aren’t coming from them. Palestinians in Gaza say they see little hope for the future and many are turning to religion as an answer. Linda Gradstein reports from Gaza City.

Five times a day the Muslim call to prayer echoes through the dusty streets of Gaza. Since it is currently the holy month of Ramadan, many Palestinians here go to the mosque every day to pray. During this month Religious Muslims fast from sunup to sundown.

Gazan society has always been conservative. But lately it’s become even more so.

You won’t see anyone eating or smoking in daylight hours during Ramadan, at least not publicly, and almost everyone here says they fast. These days, the overwhelming majority of Gazan girls and women wear hijab, or a headscarf covering their hair, and increasing numbers are wearing niqab, a burka-like garment that covers everything but the eyes.

Fifteen year old Riwan Hamad says she has covered her hair since she was 12, when her parents encouraged her to start covering up.

“This is an order by Allah, an order of God that we as Muslims should wear a scarf.”

“This is an order by Allah, an order of God that we as Muslims should wear a scarf.”

This summer, Gaza’s chief justice ordered all female lawyers to wear headscarves in court. Hamas officials have since rescinded the order. But there are also reports that Hamas has ordered the imposition of dress codes elsewhere. Principals in a number of girls schools have told students they must wear a headscarf and a jilbab, a long coat-like dress instead of the jean skirts they used to wear.

Ahmad Yousef

“When you have headscarf and jilbab you tell the others who try to exploit the situation, I’m a good Muslim, try somebody else, I’m not your target.”

But Yusuf insists that Hamas has not given orders to impose a dress code.

“Every Muslim knows there is no compulsion in religion. No one will say you have to wear the headscarf or the special clothes….we will leave it to our Islamic culture, our family values and those the family will actually convince their kids what they should wear to meet the basic Islamic values.”

Many observers see the deepening focus on Islamic values here as a direct result of what happened in Gaza 2007. That year Hamas took complete control of the strip after a mini-civil war with its rival, Fatah.

Israel, which considers Hamas a terrorist group, then imposed an economic boycott on Gaza.

Israel allows basic food, medicine and fuel into the Strip but many other goods are in short supply. And Gaza’s aren’t allowed to leave the densely populated Strip except in some humanitarian cases. Israel has closed its border with Gaza and Egypt has done the same.

Hassan Abu Jarad, a professor of linguistics at Gaza’s Al-Aqsa University says many of the 1.5 million Palestinians living here feel trapped.

“People are becoming more and more desperate. This is the reality. The situation is getting worse day after day. The siege which has been imposed on Gaza is still being practiced with a few chances of opening the chances to let the basic necessities. People feel as if they were animals being fed.”

Bulldozer in Gaza

“People are angry at everybody. People are angry at Abu Mazen, at Israel, people hate Hamas, we feel we have been deceived by everybody. The general move is that neither Hamas nor Abu Mazen are going to get us any step forward.”

In this atmosphere, he says, religious extremism can flourish. He cites as an example an extreme group called the Warriors of God. Last month, the group took over a mosque in the southern city of Rafah near Egypt. The group said Hamas was too lenient and it declared an imposition of strict Islamic law.

Hamas forces reacted by surrounding the mosque and opening fire. Some two dozen people were killed and hundreds arrested.

Analysts here say that if Israel continues to impose the blockade on Gaza and the borders with Egypt remain closed, Islamic extremism will continue to find fertile ground here. And that, they say, poses as much a danger to Hamas as it does to Israel.

For The World, I’m Linda Gradstein, Gaza City.

Surf’s up for today’s Geo Quiz. You can catch the perfect wave off the coast of the island we’re looking for.

It’s part of French Polynesia…so that puts us in the South Pacific Ocean. The island’s about 400 square miles…and it’s a beautiful place. The French painter Paul Gaugin certainly liked it there.

Today, it’s especially popular with tourists. And those waves! You won’t find better surfing anywhere. In fact, a 3D IMAX film about surfing is being shot on the island.

The film is expected to premiere in five months. But you’ve got a little more than five SECONDS to come up with the answer.

We were looking for an island location in the heart of French Polynesia where shooting is underway for an IMAX surfing movie.

The name of the island is Tahiti.

National Geographic explorer Jon Bowermaster has been watching the shoot. Now Jon — help us out a bit. The islands of French Polynesia are scattered over a million square miles of ocean….and there are around 130 islands. Does Tahiti have the wildest, most dangerous, most perfect surf wave?

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• Check out the movie site

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World. It’s Labor Day though it’s not much of a holiday for the nearly 15 million Americans out of work. New figures put the jobless rate at 9.7%. Today President Obama put a positive spin on the numbers.

BARACK OBAMA: For second straight month we lost fewer jobs than the month before and it was the fewest jobs that we had lost in a year. So make no mistake we’re moving in the right direction.

WERMAN: We’ll hear more on the US labor picture in a moment but first we check in on three other countries struggling with growing unemployment. We start with The World’s Laura Lynch in London.

LAURA LYNCH: Fall is in the air. The leaves are just starting to turn. But that’s not stopping analysts and economists from talking about green shoots. It’s a fixation for those trying to figure out whether Britain’s bruised economy is on the mend. Housing market? Maybe a bit of growth – a bit of green sprouting through the dry ground of recession. But on this Labor Day when it comes to jobs the best description is – well is a brown shoot. Two million, two hundred and fifty thousand people are out of work in the UK. That’s 7.8% up from 5.5% last September. And most experts believe the worst is yet to come predicting that some time in the next several months unemployment will break through the $3 million mark. There haven’t been that many people out of work since 1993. The slightest bit of good news in all of this is that the growth of the rate of unemployment is slowing. The UK, so dependent on the financial sector for much of the economic good times it enjoyed for so many years, is now paying the price. It’s missing out on the start of the recovery that’s taking shape in France and Germany. Now the focus is on Britain’s young job seekers. Under 25s are making up half of those who are joining the ranks of the jobless. Analysts fear it will be years before many of them are able to find steady, stable work in an economy that will struggle to fully recover. For The World I’m Laura Lynch in London.

GERRY HADDEN: I’m Gerry Hadden in Barcelona. Here in Spain the unemployment rate has reached a record 18.5%. That’s the highest in Western Europe. One result – Spain’s daytime TV talk shows are enjoying larger audiences and they’re playing to their public parading out the jobless.

TAMARA: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

HADDEN: This 26-year-old woman named Tamara lost her job as a sales woman a year ago. She says you begin to realize when you’ve been unemployed the entire year that the situation is hopeless. Sending out resume after resume, using personal connections, the internet – nothing works. Either you adopt an accepting attitude, she says, leaving things in the hands of God or you go crazy. Spain’s unemployment rate usually goes down in the summer during peak tourist season but August saw an increase of more than 80,000 Spaniards applying for unemployment. As the economy sputters the government has raised unemployment benefits and extended them. But that’s fueling a growing deficit. Spain has two problems that single it out from the rest of Europe. First its miraculous economic growth over the past decade depended on a building boom that collapsed. So far no other sector has been able to absorb the idled construction workers. Also consumer spending remains low because people borrowed too much on credit during the brick-and-mortar hay days. Now Spaniards are struggling just to pay back what they owe. Today the Spanish government had more bad news to share. Unemployment in the coming months could reach 20%. Economists say neighboring France and Germany should see their unemployment numbers starting to ease within six months as their manufacturing sectors revive. In Spain they’re talking years.

AARON SCHACHTER: I’m Aaron Schachter in Beirut. Lebanon is often seen as having weathered the economic storm. Its gross domestic product is expected to grow by up to 4% and the crucial banking and tourism industries are booming. But unemployment could be Lebanon’s dirty little secret. The rate is officially around 10%. Economists though estimate the real figure as double that in larger part due to recent wars and political instability. Lebanese generally take the country’s volatility in stride but investors do not. Local job creation has been a problem so Lebanese grads have generally packed off to the Gulf. But with hotspots like Dubai hit hard by the economic downturn unemployed professionals are coming home. Dominic Dudley is deputy editor of the Middle East Economic Digest. He says there’s an irony to the current economic woes in the Middle East. It‘s made relative titans out of countries that were once thought of banana republics.

DOMINIC DUDLEY: The best economies are probably the ones which are least integrated into the global economy. So places like Syria and Algeria and Libya are probably doing the best.

SCHACHTER: Some countries continue to do well. Especially the oil and gas rich states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Both expect double digit GDP growth this year. For The World I’m Aaron Schachter in Beirut.

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MARCO WERMAN: We’ve now heard from three countries – Lebanon, Spain, and the UK – about the employment situation there. Justin Fox you’re Time Magazine’s economics columnist. Put this into a wider global context for us. Can you give us a snapshot of how the global economy is fairing overall today, Labor Day.

JUSTIN FOX: Well I mean obviously there are lots of signs that the worst is over; that we may be in a recovery. But in the context of Labor Day it’s usually the employees who find out last about these recoveries. They show up in financial markets first and unemployment rates are usually lagging indicators. So just on a sort of globe-wide scale there are a lot of good economic signs. Almost none of them are in the employment numbers. I mean Canada actually had an increase in employment last month. But there’s not a whole lot of that going on outside of this handful of countries like China and India that have kind of cruised through this whole downturn mostly untouched.

WERMAN: Right and why is it different in Canada for example?

FOX: There are various theories. The biggest one is Canada did not have a big financial problem and that’s what … . I mean the United Kingdom and Spain they had financial crises as bad or worse than the US. I mean Spain’s housing bubble makes ours look – well not tame. That’s an exaggeration. But it was pretty spectacular. And so a country that didn’t have a financial crisis – the housing bubble to work through – you know it’s not going to have as bad a recession. Also in Canada it’s a very commodities-driven economy and so now that commodities prices have begun to recover some that helps as well.

WERMAN: There are distinct places – sort of patches across the planet – that have similarities economically speaking. How radically different from region to region is the employment scene right now?

FOX: Well I mean one thing that’s happened is countries that are really heavily dependent on manufacturing exports and that’s Asian countries like Japan or South Korea or Taiwan but it’s also Germany to a great extent. They all got just utterly hammered in terms of economic growth. I mean they’ve had sharper recessions than the US has but for the most part haven’t laid everybody off yet because they’re all just sort of hoping it’s this temporary thing and the global economy will get going again. I mean one thing that’s interesting that’s happened is the US, over the past 15 or 20 years, has always had substantially lower unemployment rates than the European Union. Right now we’re just about even.

WERMAN: As other countries around the globe emerge or at least might seem to be emerging from their recessions how does that affect the US economy?

FOX: It helps for the most part. The negative is that it increases demand for commodities and while we are exporters of some big commodities like corn we’re also a huge importer of the biggest commodity of them all – oil. So in that sense it sort of slows things down a little bit here. But I mean one positive sign in the US economy has been the manufacturing sector. Most signals are that it’s now on the growth path again and a significant part of that is demand from overseas for sort of high-end, US-manufactured products.

WERMAN: We do talk a lot about global competition these days. As economies come out of this recession will countries with similar economic situations actually help each other get out of this mess – at least until they can get steady – and then would competition presumably resume?

FOX: Well I mean competition is there all the time. At one level China’s ability to sort of keep chugging through this downturn has helped the world economy. It’s definitely helped keep things from being as bad as they would be otherwise. But I think from the Chinese perspective it’s also this great competitive statement that here we are. We’re still growing. We are now in utterly indispensable, global economic power.

WERMAN: Justin Fox, Time Magazine’s economics columnist. His new book is “The Myth of the Rational Market.” Justin thank you very much.

FOX: Thank you Marco.

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MARCO WERMAN: When people aren’t working people aren’t spending. And when people aren’t spending people aren’t selling. These facts of life are all too obvious in today’s art market. The BBC’s art correspondent Lawrence Pollard in London prepared this report.

AUCTIONEER: Good evening ladies and gentlemen and a warm welcome to Sotheby’s and this historic sale … .

LAWRENCE POLLARD: In September last year one of the most successful contemporary art auctions of all time took place. Artist Damien Hurst sold $200 million worth of art all in one go. The art market had never seen a boom like it. And strangely it was on the very same day that this was the top story in the news.

NEWS ANNOUNCER: The decision by Lehman Brothers to file for bankruptcy late last night sent shockwaves around the globe.

POLLARD: Slowly the art market followed all other markets into a collapse – especially the type of art beloved of bankers; the cutting edge trendy stuff called post-war contemporary.

GEORGINA ADAM: We’ve seen paintings go for half of what they’d fetched a few years ago.

POLLARD: Georgina Adam is art market editor for the Art Newspaper and the Financial Times.

ADAM: Sotheby’s and Christies reported drops of 50%, 60%, even 70% compared to the previous year. Particularly the market for post-war and contemporary art has really seen a massive drop. It had a great appeal to people with a lot of money, people with new money, and that really is the part of the art market that has been hit the most. It has dropped catastrophically really. The sales have turned in totals that were perhaps 20% or 30% of the totals that were made a year ago.

POLLARD: Banking and art have always gone together like love and marriage. For example, there is the Robert Lehman collection in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The former CEO of Lehman’s, Richard Fuld, was a respected art collector. His wife, Kathy Fuld, was a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art. Together they sold $13 million worth of art just a few months ago. And of course Lehman’s had its own corporate collection. Now just as you can buy Lehman’s baseball caps and pens on E-bay soon you’ll find part of the Lehman art collection for sale.

ANN HENRY: Roy Lichtenstein, Louise Bourgeois, David Hockney, [PH] Bernise Abbot … .

POLLARD: Ann Henry is from Freeman’s Auctioneers in Philadelphia where the art, or some of it, is to be sold in a few weeks time for, it’s hoped, over a million dollars.

HENRY: Everything was hanging in various Lehman Brothers’ offices in New York, Boston, and Delaware. The stuff in the corridor; the stuff in the board room; individual offices. The company had a very important significance in the history of our country and I think their collection reflects that.

POLLARD: Not all the collection is being sold. Neither Lehman’s, the liquidators, nor their art consultant would give us an interview so we don’t which pieces are being kept back. But we presume it’s in the hope that the market will pick up in the future. Because as Georgina Adam points out this is a bad time to hold a sale.

ADAM: As with all assets when you have to sell it’s not worth as much as was when you bought it. And then of course when the hard times come, all of a sudden it’s sort of looked at as an asset and something that can be realized to make some money.

POLLARD: However recent events can also add interest. Coming up for sale is a print of the New York Stock Exchange. The print used to belong to Lehman Brother’s who caused the stock exchange to crash so who wouldn’t enjoy that irony up on their wall?

HENRY: That will be interesting to see. I’m curious to see the result of that as well. I think we’ve had a tremendous amount of interest in the sale already from a lot of people in the finance industry. So I’m very curious to see what prints of this theme do in the sale.

POLLARD: Ann Henry of Freeman’s Auctioneers and the auctions of Lehman’s art begin on the first of November. For The World I’m Lawrence Pollard in London.

WERMAN: The BBC is running a special series of reports this week looking at how people across the globe are fairing one year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. You can find out more about that series at The World dot org. Look for our best of the BBC section on the homepage.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World. You’re reminded of one relatively new restriction at airports every time you fly these days – it’s when you’re told you can’t get liquids past security unless they’re of a certain size and in a certain bag and so on. You may have forgotten when those rules went into effect and why. Well there was a reminder today. Three men were found guilty in Britain of conspiring to murder people by blowing up airliners in 2006. Their weapons were homemade liquid bombs. The BBC’s Rob Watson is in London. Rob remind us first of all please what the plan was.

ROB WATSON: The plan was to mix the liquids together on board the airliners and then to explode them in midair. Now the prosecution alleged that there were perhaps seven or even more planes that were going to be targeted on their way from London to North America. So that’s flights to the US and to Canada.

WERMAN: Right and during the trial did it ever emerge what kind of explosive this is? It can actually if in a bottle?

WATSON: Yes. The idea was to mix together a kind of soft drink powder and hydrogen peroxide and I should say that the British government authorities tested out whether such a device would work and indeed so did the BBC. The BBC tried to use the exact mix inside an aircraft [INDISCERNIBLE] and it blew a hole in it.

WERMAN: Wow! How big a hole? And a hole in the wall of the plane?

WATSON: It was certainly the conclusion of the prosecutors and indeed of the explosives expert that the BBC called and that the likelihood is it would have produced a hole big enough to bring the planes down.

WERMAN: We should say, quite sincerely here, you should not try this at home. How close did these plotters get to carrying out their scheme?

WATSON: We’re never going to be entirely sure about that. They had been followed intensively. There were under intense surveillance – the biggest operation that Britain’s police and security services have ever mounted – for about three or four months. And they were brought in, essentially the police say, when they just feared that they were getting close enough to be in a position to carry out the plot. So it may have been days away – maybe longer.

WERMAN: There has been some concern that the detectives on the case may have rounded up the suspects too soon. Why too soon?

WATSON: Yes there was controversy about that. It was because of the arrest of an individual in Pakistan which it was said at the time may have forced the hand of British detectives. And again even behind that there was the suggestion that it was the United States that had got very, very jumpy about this. It was very worried that perhaps the plot would go ahead and were perhaps behind the arrest in Pakistan. But essentially, to answer your question, the concern is always in counterterrorism cases when a plot hasn’t happened that if you move too soon then maybe when you actually get to court you won’t have quite enough evidence to convince a jury that they were serious. Now in this case the prosecution was lucky. It should be said that this was a retrial. In the first trial the jury hadn’t been convinced one way or another.

WERMAN: How come double jeopardy didn’t apply?

WATSON: It didn’t apply because they weren’t acquitted. What happened is that it was hung jury. In other words the jury couldn’t decide, first time around, whether they were guilty and it certainly couldn’t decide that they were not guilty. And so given the magnitude of this case – and one really wants to emphasize this – Britain’s police and intelligence services will tell you this is the biggest crime they can ever remember. One that involved more resources then any other investigation. So that of course was why the British authorities weren’t content to just have the men go free after the first trial.

WERMAN: We know these three men are all British. We know they were willing to be suicide bombers. What more do we know about them and their motives?

WATSON: Well we certainly know that they were linked to Pakistan. They were British citizens of Pakistani decent and certainly at least one of the defendants had visited Pakistan in the run-up to the alleged plot. And indeed he had been there at the same time as the ring leader of the 07/07 attacks on London’s transport system. The intelligence services certainly believe they have links to Pakistan and indeed go further and say that they’re convince that this plot was in fact directed by al-Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

WERMAN: Four other men were acquitted in this trial. How much support do these kind of people get among Britain’s Muslim population?

WATSON: Well it’s very hard to say as such. Certainly one of the polls that I know sticks in the mind of Britain’s security services was a poll done after the 07/07 attacks in which I think it was suggested that 13% of Britain’s Muslim population of nearly two million considered these people martyrs. And that was something that really, really worried the British authorities. As you can imagine that there was that level of support, or at least sympathy, for the men who’d carried out these actions. How much support these particular plotters would have had is difficult to say.

WERMAN: The BBC’s Rob Watson in London. Thank you very much.

WATSON: Thank you. Good to be with you.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. It was two months ago that ethnic tensions in the western Chinese city of Urumqi erupted in violence. Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese have been increasingly bitter and violent rivals in Chinese Xinjiang region. The riots in July left nearly 200 people dead. Now those same tensions are nearing the boiling point again. Demonstrators are calling for the resignation of the local communist party secretary Wang Lequan. But The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing says Wang is too important for the Chinese government to let go.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: He is the head of Xinjiang region but he’s also a member of the 25-person politburo – the top ruling circle in China. So when crowds are calling for his resignation or for him to be sacked that’s really demanding something that the communist party is not willing to entertain at all. They don’t want people to think they can take to the streets and demand leadership changes because who knows where that might lead.

WERMAN: And how unprecedented are demands like these in China?

MAGISTAD: It doesn’t happen very often – not like this. But Xinjiang is a special place. A lot of Han Chinese were encouraged by the government to move out there to sort of settle the Wild West. Some of them moved with a military-linked group called the Production and Construction Core and some of them have been there for generations. So they feel like the government should be on their side. The reason that these demonstrations started this past week was that there had been rumors and reports going around that people had been attacked by Uighurs with syringes and there were hundreds of people who said – about 500 people – who said they’d been attacked this way. The hospital confirmed a smaller number. But Han Chinese took the streets and said we want the government to crack down harder. We want them to do more against the Uighurs. And the government’s response has been always to Han Chinese when they take to the streets in Urumqi, look we know you’re concerned; we’re on your side; we’re going to find the people who are responsible for the riots in July and we’ll take care of you but please don’t take to the streets anymore.

WERMAN: Right we’ll get to those alleged stabbings by syringes in just a minute. First of all though, just to clarify – I mean because this is kind complicated for outsiders. The Han Chinese – the majority Han Chinese ethnic group – want the government to crack down harder on the Turkic Uighur minority. But why are the Uighurs so mad?

MAGISTAD: The Uighurs were the majority in Xinjiang not that long ago. Xinjiang is actually called the Uighur autonomous region. But what’s happened in recent decades is millions of Han Chinese have moved in. And while Uighurs are still more or less the majority in the region as a whole, in Urumqi Han Chinese are the majority. Uighurs are angry because they feel that the Han Chinese have taken their land, they’re exploiting their resources, and they don’t give them jobs. And not only that; they look down on them. They think that they’re kind of backward and dangerous and they’re losing not only economically but they’re also losing their culture.

WERMAN: So back to this alleged spade of stabbings with syringes. With hundreds of cases reported but there is uncertainty if this is even for real and the numbers from hospital officials do seem to call into question how wide-spread this phenomenon is. What is going on?

MAGISTAD: Well over the last two weeks or so there have been more than 500 reports from individuals that they had been stabbed by people with syringes and usually the perpetrators are said to be Uighurs. There’s a lot of concern from Han Chinese about this because Xinjiang has the highest level of HIV of any region or province in China and there are a lot of drug users in Xinjiang – most of them Uighurs. So if someone’s going around stabbing you with a syringe, you worry that it might be contaminated with HIV.

WERMAN: And if those needles are infected with something, HIV or something else, the hospitals might not know it; the patients might now know it, until many months down the road.

MAGISTAD: Certainly yeah. It takes up to six months for HIV to show in a test. So for the Military Hospital to say hey everything’s okay; you’re not infected; we don’t see any signs that you’re infected – it’s cold comfort at this point. People don’t really know whether they’re infected.

WERMAN: So where is all this heading? I mean how troubling is it for the central government at this point?

MAGISTAD: It’s got to be very troubling. I mean we’re only three weeks away from the anniversary celebrations of the 60^th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. There’s stepped up security everywhere. There’s an increasing crackdown on the internet and on media and the government really wants to control this, period. And then suddenly this blows up in their face.

WERMAN: The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing. Thank you.

MAGISTAD: Thank you Marco.

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MARCO WERMAN: Israel today announced approval of some 450 new housing units in the occupied West Bank. The move defies a call from the Obama administration to freeze all building activities in the settlements. Palestinian officials say today’s action shows that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t serious about restarting the peace process. The World’s Matthew Bell has more.

MATTHEW BELL: These are the first official new housing authorizations for the Netanyahu government that came into office back in March. Most of the new construction, approved today, is in areas close to Israel but permission has also been given to build in the Jordan Valley – that’s an area many see as vital to a future state of Palestine. The standoff over settlements between the US and Israel is about four months old now. Back in May Secretary of State Hilary Clinton explained in especially clear language where the administration stood on Israeli settlements.

HILARY CLINTON: We think it is in the best interest of the effort that we are engaged in that settlement expansion cease. That is our position. That is what we have communicated very clearly not only to the Israelis but to the Palestinians and others. And we intend to press that point.

BELL: If that was the line for the Obama Administration the Israelis just crossed it and the Palestinians are crying foul. Ghassan Khatib directs the Government Media Center of the Palestinian Authority. He says today’s announcement by Israel is a blow to President Obama’s stated goal of reviving the peace process and ending what he calls the Israeli occupation of large parts of the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

GHASSAN KHATIB: How can we go to negotiations about ending the occupation while at the same time one party to negations is busy consolidating this occupation by expanding illegal settlements there?

BELL: Khatib says President Obama is about to lose what little credibility he had among Palestinians in the region. Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is even less trusted in the Arab world. But Netanyahu has been under pressure from right-wing members of his own government who support the settlements. David Makovsky is the author of “Myths, Illusions, and Peace.” He says Netanyahu is trying to throw a political bone to the right wing by approving new settlement housing. At the same time Makovsky says Netanyahu wants to please Washington and he appears ready to impose a moratorium on further settlement growth.

DAVID MAKOVSKY: This is his way saying – squaring the circle – telling the Obama Administration I will do what you want on an overall freeze but before I do what you want with an overall freeze I will symbolically announce a few units to people who are largely his voters which he sees will be part of Israel anyway in the ultimate peace agreement with the Palestinians.

BELL: If the Obama Administration was taken by surprise with today’s announcement it’s not showing much fury. The White House has issued a statement saying it regrets Israel’s decision to approve new settlement housing. US Special Envoy George Mitchell is scheduled to return the Middle East later this week. There’s an expectation that he will be trying to arrange a three-way summit between President Obama, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, for later this month at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. For The World I’m Matthew Bell.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: There is no First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion in Egypt. That’s okay if you’re Muslim, Christian, or Jewish. If not it’s been impossible to get a government ID card. But last month an Egyptian court ruled in favor of a follower of the Bahai religion. He and his children can fill out their papers and leave that question on religious identification blank. It’s a step in the right direction for Bahais but Aya Batrawy reports from Cairo that Egyptians Bahais have a long way to go before they’re accepted as equals.

AYA BATRAWY: While it’s never been illegal to be a Bahai in Egypt, being one has never been easy. Amm Ahmed, his wife, and their six children had to flee their rural town of Suhag in southern Egypt due to harassment. In March, fellow residents burned his house down along with those of three other Bahai families. Even now, he is meeting me in a private residence on the outskirts of Cairo away from the public eye and security officials.

AMM AHMED: [SPEAKING ARABIC]

BATRAWY: And it is only in private that Amm Ahmed can practice his faith. Dressed in a traditional Egyptian gallabiya and turban he reads verses from the Bahai holy book as the Muslim call to evening prayer rings out in the background.

AHMED: [SPEAKING ARABIC]

BATRAWY: Although born Bahai he used to work as a reciter of the Quran. He saw nothing wrong with reading the Quran since the Bahai faith embraces it as well as the scriptures of other religions. But soon after he announced he was Bahai both he and his wife were imprisoned for nine months on charges of which he is still unaware. The recent torching of his house because he is Bahai further convinced him the government must do more.

AHMED: [SPEAKING ARABIC]

TRANSLATOR: Egypt can do better than this. It must open a dialogue with Bahais and sit with us and see what we believe in. This way people can relax and we can relax.

BATRAWY: The Bahai faith was founded in the mid-19^th century by a Persian named Baha’Ullah. Members believe that God’s will has been revealed by messengers of all the world’s major religions and that world peace will come when humanity recognizes it is one race which worships one God. But many Muslims view the religion as a heretical deviation of Islam and Bahais have long faced persecution particularly in Iran. Here in Egypt Bahais enjoyed some level of recognition until 1960 when the government outlawed their public activities and forced them to misidentify themselves on government documents as either a Muslim, Christian, or Jew. Following years of legal struggle a court ruled earlier this year that Bahais can leave the section under religion as blank on government identification cards and birth certificates. Hossam Bahgat of the Egyptian Initiative for Human Rights.

HOSSAM BAHGAT: There are two ways of looking at this positive court outcome. For Bahais it’s simply a correction of a mistake. But for Egyptians in general it is a significant step in that this is the first time in Egypt’s legal history that there is an administrative system to deal with Egyptians who do not adhere to one of the three state-recognized religions of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.

RAOUF HINDY: [SPEAKING ARABIC]

BATRAWY: Seated at a café in downtown Cairo Dr. Raouf Hindy enjoys a steaming Turkish coffee as he talks about the court case. He’s a modest hero among fellow Bahais for taking the government to court and winning. His children have just become the first Egyptians to receive the new IDs.

HINDY: [SPEAKING ARABIC]

BATRAWY: He says before this ruling Bahais either had to lie on official papers which could lead to being jailed or they had to function as best they could without documentation. Now he says he’s happy that no one will force him to lie.

But there are delays and complications. Oral Surgeon Dr. Basma Moussa is one of hundreds of Bahais still waiting for the new ID. She asked that the interview be conducted in her car because she’s weary of being interviewed in public. Although she’s been married for over 20 years she doesn’t have a marriage license because the Egyptian government does not recognize Bahai marriages. This means that if she and her husband check into a hotel they have to get separate rooms because unwed Egyptian couples are not legally allowed to rent hotel rooms together. It also means that she cannot file taxes properly, open a bank account, buy a new car, or receive government benefits.

BASMA MOUSSA: [SPEAKING ARABIC]

TRANSLATOR: We’re tired. We’re exhausted. And they keep making things more complicated. Just give me my papers. Since the ruling was made and the order was issued there are complications you can’t even imagine to get the new ID. Now even those who have the new birth certificate cannot marry with this ID because they say they don’t accept the Bahai marriage.

BATRAWY: Bahais still face an uphill battle for acceptance in Egypt. Just last month there protests and arrests after the government announced plans to re-house Bahais whose homes were burnt down. But the new IDs have given them hope that change is coming. For The World this Aya Batrawy in Cairo.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC Pictures: Weird crater creatures
• Video of the giant rat
• BBC Earth News

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: You could be forgiven if you’re skeptical about the claims of an expedition team that just got back from Papua New Guinea. After all those claims sound pretty far fetched. They include the discovery camouflaged gecko, a fanged frog, a fish that makes grunting noises, and a giant rat. All of them never known by biologists to have existed. But leave your skepticism at the door. These guys have proof. They filmed their expedition for a BBC TV program called “Lost Land of the Volcano.” The team leader was Professor George McGavin of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. So George McGavin how many new species did you find?

GEORGE MCGAVIN: Well it’s hard to be absolutely sure because obviously with the small stuff, with the insects and the spiders, they are so small they will require careful looking at. But what’s really interesting is it’s the large things like a giant rat which is 32 inches long. Like we found 16 new species of frog for heaven’s sake. You know three species of fish at least. Possibly one new bat and that’s not to say anything about the orchids and things. I mean this is a very rich area indeed and it’s almost hard to believe that an area of the earth’s surface hasn’t been properly explored but it hasn’t.

WERMAN: Right well let’s talk about that area and then we’ll talk about some of the details of these creatures you discovered. This is in a volcano. How did you know about this volcano and how’d you get inside?

MCGAVIN: Well this is actually our third outing. We filmed the series in Borneo in Guyana and we try to pick areas which are A) remote – hard to reach and which have sort of interesting features. And the thing with this particular place is it’s a very large volcano indeed which was active about a quarter of a million years ago. Okay so in that time it’s now quiet or got extinct and it’s become covered with forest and in there of course are all these animals. Now the reason that they’re there and the reason that they seem to be quite unafraid of humans is that there’s not much hunting there although there are humans there. You know if you’re a hunter you don’t really want to go right up to the top of this volcanic rim and then go down inside and then have to carry all your things out again. So basically it’s been pretty much untouched for a very long time.

WERMAN: So it’s a pristine place. That means nothing comes out and thing goes in.

MCGAVIN: Yeah I mean of the places we’ve seen it’s about as pristine as you can get I would say.

WERMAN: Apparently the local Kasua tribe, a lot of them acted as trackers for this expedition. They don’t actually go inside themselves. Are there any cultural taboos that were preventing you form going into the crater?

MCGAVIN: No. I mean they were happy that we were in there. And the reason that they don’t hunt there isn’t because of some spiritual taboo. It’s just that you know if you can easily find what you need elsewhere without having to walk for three days you know up a volcano and into it you know you don’t do that. And that was seen in the way the animals were. I mean this giant rat, which is a very attractive animal I have to say. It’s got silvery-grey fur. It was very laid back. It was very chilled and it would just sit there.

WERMAN: Tell us about finding this rat. I mean … .

MCGAVIN: Oh well now see I can’t claim to have been in the team that actually found the rat because we had to split into two groups. Chris [PH] Helgin who is the expert on that sort of animal he was in the crater with half the team and it was in here that they found this pretty amazing animal.

WERMAN: There is a video of it that our listeners can come and see online at The World dot org. But in it it’s pretty striking because you literally just stumble upon it.

MCGAVIN: Yes they… . I mean I’ve watched the film a few times and it is quite amazing. You know it showed hardly any fear at all. Now here we are at a time when these habitats are hugely under threat and in fact there are extraction operations of wood and timber only 20 miles from where we filmed. And the forest is being cut down at an alarming rate. And these are habitats which now only cover under 6% of the land surface area but yet they contain as much as 80% of all the species of animals and plants on earth. And if we’re going to avoid the worst effects of global climate change we have just got to keep this forest in tact.

WERMAN: For a scientist describer for us the emotion of climbing into a crater that’s never been explored and then you know the icing on the cake – to find numerous species of animals that have never been seen or identified.

MCGAVIN: It’s a huge thrill and that’s part of the reason that we film these expeditions is because we want to share it with an audience and I have to say after I come home ordinary home things seem a bit dull really.

WERMAN: That was Professor George McGavin of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Well if you want to see something that’s not dull we’ve got video of that giant wooly rat and some pictures of other creatures George McGavin found on Mount Bosavi in Papua New Guinea at The World dot org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.